My nephew was killed in a car accident back in 97. He was nine. His mother was badly injured. There wasn't a flight until the following morning, so we jumped in the car and drove 600 miles to get there as quickly as we could.

Upon arriving, we immediately went about the awful business of hospital visits and making arrangements. It was a bad time.

That first night, we were at my sisters house, it was a small house, so while everyone found a place to lay down, I ended up in my nephew's bed on the first floor. I remember laying there, surrounded by his toys, just as he had left them.

Some time later, I turned to see this beautiful blond child walk up to the bed, he/she came right up to me and said, "Let's play". I sat up and asked why they were out of bed, but the child turned and bolted from the room into the hall.

The child looked like my nephew, though it was hard to distinguish and I can't explain why. My logical mind assigned that this child must be my niece, though my niece was only two at the time. I was worried about her on the stairs, because there was no railing, so I jumped up and ran for the living room. I turned to the staircase, and didn't see her, so I started up the steps. I was half way to the top when my brother came bolting to the upstairs landing. He looked at me and said, "Where did he go?"

I immediately asked him where our niece went. I told him that she had come down the stairs, and that I was looking for her. He told me that one of the kids was in his room and wanted him to play, but that it wasn't our niece. Our kids wouldn't arrive until the next day, and so our niece was the only child in the house at the time. We both paused and just stared at each other for a moment. He then nodded unconvincingly, and said, "Okay, yeah" and went on to tell me that he was afraid that she was going to the stairs. We both went to our niece's room and found her sound asleep. We were the only two up.

The next morning, I asked him if he recalled the event, thinking that the whole thing was a dream. He said that he had, but didn't seem to want to talk about it. As I think of it now, I don't remember us ever discussing it.